If there is such a thing as hell

I know it'll be cold - not hot!

I was in Seoul last Saturday and it was snowing. Now I'll admit that I wasn't quite dressed for snow - I was wearing clothing a little heavier than needed for winter in Melbourne or Phoenix but it was way too little to handle the Seoul winter. It's not like I haven't been in cold places before; but those are few and far between. I remember going to school at Yarraville West Primary in 1963 at 8 in the morning and finding puddles of rain water frozen over but by recess they'd melted. These days I doubt a puddle at Yarraville West would get cold enough to freeze (nope, not global warming - merely that inner city areas don't get as cold as outer city areas - and nowadays Yarraville Primary is most definitely in the inner city).

A month or so ago I passed through Minneapolis/St Paul airport on my way to France. At the time that was the coldest I'd ever experienced (well almost). Outside temperatures were lower than in Seoul but I wasn't outside - merely passing from the plane through the air bridge to the terminal.

We don't have a bible in this house (let's not go there) but if I remember rightly it doesn't talk about the temperature in hell.

On December 31 1995 I was in New Orleans, Bourbon street to be precise. Pretty cold but well worth the cold for the experience! On January 1 I flew back to Dallas. Now you have to understand, I'd looked at the map in late November 1995, in the run up to the Australian summer. It didn't look all that far from the equator so this poor naive bastard thought his Melbourne winter clothes would be up to the task! So I found myself, after 4 hours sitting on the ground in Dallas waiting for an open gate, walking through a blizzard trying to find my rented car in the Dallas/Fort Worth aiport car park.

I can easily cope with temperatures of 48C+ but I never ever want to experience 0 C again! I'm just not built for shivering!